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Everyone must work together to create supply of housing millennials can afford

By Dave WilkesBILD President & CEO

Sat., June 9, 2018

Are you a parent with a millennial son or daughter who is living with you? Or are you a millennial living with your parents — or with roommates?

In the next decade, you are likely to be part of a significant shift in our region as a large wave of millennials starts looking for homes of their own. We will all need to work together to make sure those housing options are available, at prices buyers can afford.

About 500,000 millennials could be seeking affordable homes within the GTHA in the next decade, says a new report. (Dreamstime)

About 730,000 millennials in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) may be planning to move on from living in their parents’ homes and from sharing with roommates in the next 10 years. This will, potentially, create about 500,000 new households, according to a new report from the Centre for Urban Research and Land Development at Ryerson University, sponsored by the Ontario Real Estate Association. The report defines millennials as those born between 1981 and 2001.

The millennials leading these new households will probably be looking for much the same things in housing as did previous generations of people as they reached their peak income-earning and child-rearing years, according to the report. That means they will want to own their own homes and they will want those homes to be close to the ground —“singles, semis and townhouses.”

This much-needed stock of ground-related housing is unlikely to come from downsizing baby boomers, the report points out, given that the older generation may not be ready to move into apartments until mid-2040 to 2050. So we will need to build new housing for the millennials, and we should be focusing on ground-related housing.

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Currently, provincial policy requires intensification in key areas, which often translates into building tall condos. But these may not be the first choice for most millennials looking to buy a new home, as the report points out. At the municipal level, on the other hand, many areas are still zoned mostly for traditional detached single-family homes, making it challenging to build more affordable, ground-related housing — such as townhouses. This is just one example of how different levels of government are not speaking to each other, resulting in a shortfall in the housing supply our region needs.

If current construction trends continue, there will be more apartments than ground-related housing built in the GTHA in the next decade, leading to a deficit of about 70,000 units of the ground-related homes that millennials want, according to the report. (This is before we even consider the demand for housing created by the 115,000 new residents coming to live every year in the GTA alone.) That could lead to rising home prices, more traffic congestion and longer commutes, and even the loss of young professionals to other provinces.

As the municipal elections approach, we are encouraging voters to talk to their candidates about ways we can bring to market the healthy supply of housing that new home buyers — including new millennial households — can afford.

Dave Wilkes is President and CEO of the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), the voice of the home building, land development and professional renovation industry in the GTA. For the latest industry news and new home data, follow BILD on Twitter, @bildgta, or visit bildgta.ca.

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